There are two types of visual HTML editors: standalone programs and in-browser editors. A standalone HTML editor may use all functionality provided by the Operating System it runs under. But an in-browser HTML editor is hosted in a web browser and thus it can only use functionality available from a web browser; it also subjects to security restrictions imposed by a web browser.
This invention is in the field of in-browser visual HTML editing. It is also referred to as “browser-based HTML editing”, “in-place HTML editing”, “in-browser HTML editing”, “online HTML editing”, “online rich-text editor” (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_rich-text_editor), “Through the Web (TTW) editor” (see www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/WebEditors), etc.
An “in-browser” visual HTML editor uses the contents editing capabilities provided by a web browser. Usually such an editor is created in JavaScript.
In-browser visual HTML editing is now supported by most browsers for “What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)” HTML editing. Industry standardization is progressing on this field.
WYSIWYG document editing allows the user to edit a document while the document is displayed in its formatted viewing form. Standalone programs such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, etc., all provide WYSIWYG document editing.
A traditional WYSIWYG document editor works by providing a set of buttons and a set of menus for executing editing commands on the selected document text or the text under caret.
Traditional ways of WYSIWYG document editing is adopted by all state-of-art browser-based HTML editors. Actually it is considered a major design goal of a browser-based visual HTML editor to mimic traditional WYSIWYG document editing (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_richtext_editor).
Microsoft added an “execCommand” function to the web page's DOM object, “document”, and added a set of HTML editing commands to its Internet Explorer web browser (see msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536419.aspx). Most of other web browsers followed what Microsoft did and added supports of “execCommand” function and the editing commands the Internet Explorer uses (see www.quirksmode.org/dom/execCommand.html, tifftiff.de/contenteditable/compliance_test.html, and ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2010-03-08/thoughts-future-web-based-html-editors). With such support from a web browser, a browser-based HTML editor can be made like a word-processor: a toolbar can be created to execute editing commands provided by the browser.
The HTML editing commands are being standardized by W3C (see www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#editing-apis, dvcs.w3.org/hg/editing/raw-file/tip/editing.html, and www.w3.org/community/editing/).
There is a large number of in-browser HTML editors available from the internet (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_rich-text_editor and www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/WebEditors). All of them provide a word processor user interface.
EditLive claims that it is a “Word processing for the web” (see editlive.com/features).
CKEditor is adopted by many products, and it promotes itself by saying that “It brings to the web common editing features found on desktop editing applications like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.” (see ckeditor.com/what-is-ckeditor)
Asbru is for web developers/programmers. It uses a toolbar to provide a set of commands for editing HTML contents (see cditor.asbrusoft.com/).
Tinymce is for embedding visual HTML editing into web page. When it starts it shows a word processing user interface (see www.tinymce.com/).
Yahoo! is also putting large efforts in creating YUI Rich Text Editor (see developer.yahoo.com/yui/editor/), which converts a text area into a word processor.